Ghost Ships
by Bellsie805
Summary: And it's all ghost ships and phantom lies.


Title: Ghost Ships

Author: Bellsie

Pairing: House/Cameron

Warnings: Bad language

Rating: Um, somewhere between PG-13 and R

Reviews: Fantabulous

U2 slips through the speakers and it's all you can do not to cry. You've been here before and it's over and over the same story again. Experimentation leads not to an unknown destination but to the same one. Hypotheses are tested and concluded to be false. Life goes on and it spins and spins away.

It breaks you into pieces without a second thought.

You can't look at pictures of him because you feel like a voyeur. Any picture of him makes you cringe at your obsessive nature. You wish you could burn them, but your hand and heart are allies in this task—they'll team up against your mind any day.

You cringe when you see people laugh with him and have a good time. It's rare, but he does smile. And when he smiles when he's not around you, you can't help but think that maybe it's because he doesn't like you…oh, traitorous mind!

When he loses the bet about Chase's relationship status, he agrees to go miniature golfing with you; he drives and you pay. He's a gentleman but he's not chivalrous. You've always wanted a Rhett Butler and not an Ashley Wilkes. It's an absurd metaphor and it gets more absurd when you compare Stacy to Scarlett and yourself to Melanie. _Nice_, just, _nice_…

You wish you were more like Daisy Buchanan. You want a man to lust for you in the fashion that Gatsby lusted after her. You want to be Lee Holloway—lusting after a man who loves you despite his—and your—oddest tendencies. Sylvia Plath pleads in your mind _never try to trick me with a kiss_. You laugh out loud because you know this is a crazy dance of random classic literature and dark comedies (does suicidal poetry count?)—fantasies.

He turns his head and shakes it in the same movement. He thinks you're crazy and you can't help but smile at the thoughts flitting through your head and his. U2 blasts from the speakers—this night smells of salty winds and heavy humidity. This is Long Beach Island—his favorite coastal getaway.

In Jersey, you must own a beach house or know someone that does. Escapes to the relatively smog-free seaside towns keep the Jersey environmental agencies free from heaps of lawsuits. It's a win-win for all involved. He likes it here, you imagine, because it's crowded enough for him to lose himself in him, but _not_ crowded enough for him to lose himself in people. He's egotistical. You're not.

Mini golfing is your idea and he immediately fortifies himself with three Vicodin. The woman behind the counter smiles and points the rack of balls. You take the pink and he takes the dark green—he does not snark about the ball choice and you refrain from talking about his. He grimaces the whole time. Losing bets are not what he is accustomed to.

So, here you are. Fake colors dot the blackness of the night sky and you can't see the stars. As you tread over squishy greens, you ponder the rain and the smell of him and the precise rhythm of his limp. You try not to laugh; you want to cry.

You measure time by the holes.

On hole three he makes his sarcastic comment. On hole four, you retaliate. On hole eight he demands you relinquish your position as scorekeeper. On hole thirteen he threatens to throw his cane at your head. You joke that you know how to duck.

On the sign that proclaims "hole sixteen" you also read about _The Laura_. It's a ghost ship, the sign ominously reads. It sunk sometime in the late 1740s (the exact date is forgettable you note…no one remembers dates anymore…passé…out of vogue) and you can supposedly see the foggy mast from here. Your interest is piqued and when he takes his tee shot you look to the horizon.

It's a cheap gimmick, you think, and look off to find the sea, but cannot, and thus cannot see the mast. All you can see are the rows of houses—people and progress have long obstructed the oceanic view. You frown and turn around only when he shouts that you're not an obstacle but a player. Your head flicks once more in the direction of the ghost ship before he sneers about women and flighty natures.

You hit the ball and think about physics when the metal connects with the ceramic of the ball. Physics, inertia, and chemistry—biology is your best subject. You were going to major in English before your father pointed out that the money would come faster in the medical field. History is a waste of your time, no matter how interesting it once was. And that's when you realize he's talking and he reminds you of your father.

He rants on about how modesty is a stupid virtue and that those dead sailors on that damn boat (he reads signs too and thinks about them, you notice. Damaged, sign-reading people apply here!) would have never written their own stories.

"It's up to some-fucking-one else to write those damn histories. And no one cares in the end," he tells her as he putts.

"Do you always talk?"

But his analysis reminds you of your father. _Modesty is overrated, Allison. Someone else always writes the story_.

When they finish playing, you smile at him and tell him that ice cream would be a nice way to end this night. He frowns.

"Remind me not to make any more bets with you."

""""""

Logic demands that love streamlines itself into a linear model. _One for all and all for one_. Lines and circles, spikes and curves—round and round we go.

So now you sit in the car. The only thing that amuses both your eyes and your brain is the traffic light in the side mirror (things appear closer than they seem). It's a 3-color palette—a rhythm to tell time to the changing colors. Red, yellow, green, repeat. There's something refreshingly systematic to the process of this stoplight. _Telling time to blinking lights_.

He limps back to the car with a bowl in his hand and when he sits down with a thud against the leather of the Corvette you notice there is only one spoon in the mixture.

"You're not getting anything?" You ask politely.

"Oh, I did. I thought you were abstaining. Bad for the waistline and all," he snickers as he digs into the brownie sundae.

You can slap him and leave or you can lick the whipped cream off the brownie seductively. The scripts are written and you can take either role; the director's calling your name.

_Allison!_

Instead of doing anything, you look at the mini-golf scorecard in your hand and mentally add up the scores. You win—58 to 62.

"I won," you tell him crisply.

"I know."

"Neither of us should stop being doctors…our golf games suck."

He smirks at you and he astonishes you when he takes the whipped cream and puts some on your nose. It's incredibly out of character.

"For winning," he tells you and you can't help but smile.

"Do you think you can see the ghost ship from there?"

"No. Another one of your lost causes?"  
"Will we ever be civil?"

"Let's try. What's your favorite book, Dr. Cameron?"

"_Bel Canto_—"

"—because of its heartbreaking nature? Because of the tortured main characters? Civil enough for you?"

You shut your mouth and stare out the window. What the hell are you doing here? Why do you bother? _Ask him if he loves you_. Why does existentialism sneak up on you in the front seat of _his_ car at _this _moment?

"Eat some. I know you don't want any because of your _figure_, but c'mon. Life's a race to die and we just use different fuel to get there."

Food philosophy? You quirk an eyebrow.

"I heard it on a cooking show once. You should watch those if you're ever going to get another husband."

"Who says I want another husband?"

"Feminist lately?"

"Only when I have to be."

"You play delicate very nice."

"Because I _am_ delicate."

"Because you like nice."

"I'm no Scarlett O'Hara lusting after Ashley Wilkes," you tell him, but he misses the literary reference to the grand novel.

"And I'm only Stacy's boy-toy."

That comments garners a dropping of the ice cream laden spoon on the Corvette's seat. Whoops.

"Fuck!" He mutters to you and wipes up the ice cream as best he can with his sleeve.

"Sorry," but your tone isn't apologetic.

"Delicate, but certainly not helpless. Stick with your diagnosis—stubbornness does not kill."

You smile and watch the Ferris wheel go around just like you and he go around and around—circling inevitable truths in the dusky nighttime sky.

"Let's go home."

""""""

What, you wonder, is the price of this evening? There's the thousand-calorie brownie sundae that he finally relents to letting you eat. There's the anger that will inevitably flow from the fact that he is low on Vicodin. There's the encroaching doubt of reality in your mind. _The night will end_.

And he'll lie to you to get you into his bed tonight (it won't be a terrible lie—it will be filmy and almost transparent—ghost words, no truth or dare). It's the Jersey shore and what happens here stays here. It's not Vegas' motto; it's a flexible slogan for all those in need of a relatively good excuse to do naughty things to people you work with. (Damn it, you think, they always warn you about not ending sentences in prepositions.)

Dylan is his medium of choice and _Hurricane _is his model of transportation. Songs about justice not served and falsely accused criminals echo through the house. _Network _is on mute when he kisses you and you can't help but laugh when you see Faye Dunaway's words form to William Holden—the line about the father complex. Oh, yes, you agree. Father complexes are spectacular.

And he loves you not because he wants to, but because he needs to. Because he needs a body and a woman who's not a hooker filled with STDs. He wants meaning as much as you. It's an empty duty in this painful duet, but _someone_ must accompany him.

Someone must write those histories.

Tonight it's all ghost ships and phantom lies.


End file.
